The present invention is related to a unique vitamin, mineral, and herbal supplement for the treatment of both type I and II diabetes, and for the prevention of type II diabetes in those individuals with pre-diabetes, or impaired glucose tolerance (IGT). Specifically, the present invention is directed towards a dietary supplement for diabetic control containing a plurality of compounds from the following group: Vanadyl sulfate, Chromium polynicotinate and picolinate, Magnesium chloride, citrate, fumarate, malate, glutorate, and succinate complex, Natural Vitamin E (free 2R, 4'R, 8'R-alpha tocopherol), Standardized Willow Bark (aspirin), Alpha-lipoic acid, and Folic acid.
Diabetes has become a leading health care issue in the United States and other industrialized countries, accounting for one seventh of the entire national health care product. The incidence of diagnosed diabetes has increased five-fold in America over the past 35 years, with currently 8 million diagnosed diabetic patients, another estimated 8 to 12 million undiagnosed diabetic individuals, and still an additional 23 million Americans with pre-diabetes, or impaired glucose tolerance (IGT). As the American populace continues its strong trend towards aging, obesity and greater minority representation, the increasing rate of diagnosed diabetes is certain to continue.
The tremendous economic and physical toll diabetes extracts from society is, in large part, secondary to both the short and long-term complications of the disease. While there have been great strides made in reducing the short term complications of diabetes, e.g. ketoacidosis, dehydration, and non-ketotic hyperosmolar coma, little, if any, headway has been made in preventing or even minimizing the devastating chronic complications of the disease, e.g. premature atherosclerosis, retinopathy, nephropathy, and neuropathy. Indeed, diabetes has become the leading cause of new cases of blindness in adults in the United States, and now accounts for over a third of all new cases of end-stage renal disease in this country. It is estimated that a diabetic patient's life is shortened by 10 to 15 years, and those years of life are distinguished by a health care tab four times that of a non-diabetic patient.
Diabetes is a major cardiovascular risk factor, especially among women. This increased risk factor in women is a fact lost by many in both the medical and lay communities. Indeed, a man's risk of dying by heart disease doubles when he develops diabetes, but a woman's risk increases three to five-fold the day she is found to have diabetes. The failure to reduce this increased risk for heart disease over the last eight decades of diabetes management is a painful reminder that our current interventions, while having the potential for more favorable impact, are woefully inadequate.
Type II diabetes [(i.e. maturity onset)], which accounts for 95% of diabetes, is far more than just a state of abnormal glucose metabolism, but is rather a milieu of co-existent cardiovascular metabolic risk factors, i.e. insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, central obesity, hypertriglyceridemia, low HDL level and elevated blood pressure: a state recently identified as Syndrome X. Much of the excessive cardiovascular morbidity and mortality associated with diabetes is secondary to this array of cardiovascular risk factors, which precede the onset of diabetes by as much as a decade and may explain the presence of overt clinical cardiovascular disease in as many as 60% of newly diagnosed diabetic patients.
However, at least one study revealed an excessive risk of cardiac mortality in diabetic patients even after adjusting for the co-existence of other cardiovascular risk factors such as hypertension, dyslipidemia and cigarette smoking. The inventor of the present invention has popularized the term "dead zone of diabetes" to describe this phenomenon of increased cardiovascular risk even after allowing for the co-existence of other risk factors in diabetes. This `dead zone" is secondary to both the atherogenicity of insulin resistance, which precedes the onset of diabetes by at least 8 years, and the atherogenicity of undiagnosed and uncontrolled hyperglycemia, which is present for 9-12 years before diabetes is first diagnosed. Treatment of diabetes, and its related chronic symptoms and risk factors, are best treated at this early stage.